c a t g u t
by MaussHauss
Summary: The rocky road of the admirant fool. Prompt response over at k!meme; intra-relationship shenanigans. Slash. Zevran/m!Surana/Alistair
1. Chapter 1

_Yet another not-quite-fannon kmeme fill. I was_  
_on a roll. Gimme yo gimme yo gimme yo Rs. _  
_Even if all you can manage is a star-point system_  
_on a scale of one to ten (ten being the AC fic ala_  
_Shaun's POV and one being the Twilight GaryStu_  
_pfahahaha)._

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There were very few people Zevran would have allowed to seize his leather armor and rattle him around in it like a dry bean in a barrel. At least his throat had not been seized, because at this point he might have gladly perished and then, oh dear, that would have been the end of him, wouldn't it? Not that this end wasn't long-coming, mind. Just he'd rather die for something a little more glorious than 'lover's spat' or 'jealous rage' or to whatever degree of over-blown ridiculousness the Warden was willing to take the ordeal. About the time sparks started to etch and sizzle through his breastplate's silverite trimming did Zevran pry Aen's skinny fingers away.

"_You_," Aen continued to strangle and shake the empty air between them, molten mana dripping from his palms.

Zevran stepped back, brushing down his front just in case. "I?"

"You, you, _you_-!"

Zevran scratched the back of his neck idly, peering at the far wall for clues to a resolution. Any resolution. _Mierda_, these Fereldens and their ridiculous stigmas about sexual relations... "I, I, I? _Ay_."

" - and - "

"Alistair, yes." Zevran shifted from foot to foot. "I thought you'd be glad to hear of it."

" - glad - !" Aen at this pint was nothing but a vibrating bundle of sticks and sparks, force energy spontaneously knocking books from shelves or decorative shields from over the mantle.

Zevran crossed his arms, unimpressed that it was over _this_of all things that Aen would choose to pitch a fit. "Glad, yes. The happy news that your knight in gleaming plate-maille is no longer averse to sharing his bed with another man, no? Now that he's had some example of it at the very least." The vase that went flying from the shelf caught Zevran square in the face, and he bent to the burst of pain to stem the sudden rush of blood.

But ah, perhaps we should start at the beginning.

Things were not so tumultuous between Antivan Assassin and Grey Warden; in fact the two had gotten along splendidly once the business with the assassination attempt had been squared away. Vows had been made (the unromantic, official kind), hands shaken, travel companions introduced, and everything from there had slowly yet steadily spiraled toward disaster.

Zevran, by trade, was an observer. To stake out a mark, a location, the crowd in which he stood (that could hold any number of dangers) his mind was the blade held to the constant honing belt. It took no measure of tactical or social genius, though, to recognize that Aen Surana was madly in love with Alistair of the Grey...

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	2. Chapter 2

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"You. Now." Aen had strode through the clearing straight across camp toward Zevran's humble tent, in front of which Zevran sat whittling tiny wooden models. Startled that he'd been caught in a moment of idle relaxation, Zevran stood with a sharp posture only to be pressed back, by a firm if not alarming shove, toward his tent.

He laughed, eyebrows near to his hairline, holding the whittle knife well away from the benevolent assault. "What's this, then? Sudden change of heart?"

"Something like that," Aen ripped the knife from Zevran's stunned fingers, then kissed him full on the mouth before drawing away to glare imperiously. He braced against the hard leather of Zevran's armor with both hands, chin lifted defiantly in wait for a rejection that never came. "Anytime soon, Zevran. The Blight waits for no man."

"Oho," Zevran chuckled, feigning severity. "Yes ser, right away ser!" He saluted loosely, then knelt to quickly untog the canvas of his humble campsite abode. Pulling Aen's longer splay of limbs in after, he broke from the increasing depth of kisses to afford them some measure of privacy, then fell to the press of bare legs under the drape of long robes, to the swift clever fingers under his armor passing quick to the soft hidden spots. They were hardly undressed by the time Aen had him erect, sliding between thighs recently exposed from breeches and smallclothes, dragged twitching and eager against the sweat-damp cleft of Aen's bony arse.

Aen's mouth fell open against Zevran's and he speared himself dry, hungry for friction and distraction and- Zevran grunted through the kiss, twisting under the discomfort, "_Easy -_" he licked his own palm and worked it between them, affording some semblance of relief.

Aen smacked the hollow of his chestplate. "Harder, man, I'm not made of glass."

"Ohoh, and I not of stone!" Zevran struggled out of the bulk of his leathers before rewarding that challenge, dumping Aen over on his back and rucking both knees up to his shoulders and (after a bit more spittle because he didn't want to _injure _anyone) pounding his length unceremoniously into the tight cleft.

Aen's response was immediate and enthusiastic, all the rigidity swept from his bones and replaced by a hearty _intimacy_ that Zevran had never before seen. They joined rough and uneven with such the abrupt and nearly violent start that was sputtering out into a thing as _savoury _as it was thorough.

Zevran knew how to bed any willing partner, how to orchestrate a body to whatever suit his mood, unwrapping Aen's robes far enough to palm and lave an exposed nipple, despite the fingers digging into his hair in a hard tug. Aen mumbled an incoherent protest, sharp eyes hazed over, staring now into the middle space while his body rocked in a stifled ebb. Zevran hummed a question over the curve of a rib, and Aen was twisting away from beneath him, struggling from the remains of his clothing only to back up on all fours, lean body arching up into the returning thrust. It was a cooperation more than it was a conquest, a month's worth of condensed flirtation manifest in the twine of limbs bared at a moment's demand.

A curse tumbled through Aen's mouth, landing loud and surprised in the middle of their small confines. A second noise followed, lower and longer and more confident. Zevran rolled his hips to repeat the stroke of cockhead deep against Aen's insides and the warden fell from hands and knees to squashed shoulder and elbow - shaking, shaking, agreeably tense and stuttering encouragement the likes to make a sailor blanch.

Zevran laughed, and the motion of his laugh made Aen squirm and complain, stilled only in the warm hands running down his backside - carting up to grasp his hips and pull him back into the punishing haste.

And just like that - it was over. The intimacy of eye contact long forgone for a baser tumbling, the noise and the sweat and the pooling tension of orgasm as Zevran played Aen's body like a familiar instrument (bodies were not very different from one another, after all). And. A crest, Aen's bitten moan loud enough that Zevran's breathless enjoyment carried the hint of smug pride. The end. Down, down, resting in a lopsided heap of cloth and bare knees.

Zevran's heart pounded thick in his throat and chest, the old drum of unexpected exercise and heady lust. Aen remained a prone lump of heavy breathing beneath him, slapping lazily at his haunches to prompt him to remove his softening cock. Zevran relented to withdraw but otherwise did not budge, though the light-hearted strikes pulled a grin between them.

On the second try to clearing his throat from its thick ropes, Zevran managed - "Care to explain?"

To which Aen replied, gaze unfocused in the no-space somewhere to the left, "Thought you could use a go at it."

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That of course had been a lie, one of many that Zevran would leave unchallenged, if only because he himself wasn't exactly telling the man to whom he had sworn his life the entire truth.

The following week passed just as any other. The clash of steel and armor, the thud of rotting flesh taking dagger hilts and arrows, the exhausted and twitchy patrols back up to camp. A little physical recreation with Aen to dispel any number of tensions - biting the furs for courtesy. Everybody on edge, and Zevran no exemption.

Aen took Zevran this night - perhaps that was the difference. Grey Wardens and their everlasting vigor, Aen a sympathetic lover who did slow justice for Zevran's wounds. The tenderness scared him. If Aen had only asked, surely he would have, had been more prepared... Zevran climaxed shaky and uncentered, insides jellied, defenses worn down like a sea-cliff by a decade's worth of tide. He did not mind buggery in and of itself, but it was with great shock when he realized that he'd fallen into bed with Aen in this manner because _he simply trusted him_.

The doubt was planted, and every day before and every day since did everything to nag Zevran's thoughts on the matter. Aen's casual brush of his personal boundaries here, a warm look or word of flattery there, all held new weight. The admonition from their fellow travelers, the scorn or the disdain or the ribald encouragement of their none-too-subtle coupling. The crushing press of their assumptions, their aloof disregard of Zevran's usual antagonism; he now gelded in their view, now gentled and tamed by unfair supposition.

"We should end this, Warden." Cornered between tents, the crackle of the camp fire loud behind him. "It would be for the better." It only disturbed Zevran the way sewing up your own wound hurts less than if someone else holds the needle - all the better to grit your teeth through the discomfort and welcome in a new scar.

Aen blinked, and for a moment Zevran guessed he'd pretend it all away, casually brush it off his shoulder and they'd change the topic. Instead, Aen's whole body seemed to slouch in defeat, a line pinching down the middle of his brow. "I... I am sorry."

Ranting, protest, questions, Zevran expected anything but an apology. He crossed his arms, eyebrows raised silently.

"I- yes, of course. You wouldn't know." A relieved laugh, putting Zevran on edge. "I should have told you sooner," A placid gentility to the usual flint of Aen's baritone. Zevran leaned away, eyes narrowed, lips parting in protest - "I am fond of you, quite a lot actually. I'd rather we kept seeing each other."

"That, ah," Zevran scowled to the ground, shoulders shrugging up helplessly. "That merely complicates matters further, you see. I cannot bed the man for whom my life is responsible. It, eh," A desperate search. Since when did words fail to answer their summons? "It is not done. No, no Warden. I cannot continue in this way. If you value my friendship, you will respect this." Each word hammered home like a coffin nail.

Aen nods, slow, eyes going glassy. He brushes his sleeves of imagined debris, sniffs once and asks Zevran if that was all he wished to announce. It might not have been a lie, this brusque disregard; but then what was the point of lying, but to be indiscernible from truth... even to oneself?

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	3. Chapter 3

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Alistair had always proven a very interesting profiling practice, Zevran picking apart his rickety patience and abstract sense of humor for tidbits of weakness or preference. The man was handsome, Zevran would readily admit. If he was being petty and resentful (and in this moment felt like nothing would suit his mood better than a tantrum over how much he really _didn't _need Aen's romantic fidelity), then Alistair could be considered leagues more physically appealing than his fellow Warden (who was sickly and birdy and gangly and had front teeth like a rabbit, and eyes so narrow and sharp like knives and that chilling way he'd stare, unblinking, craning his head as if he were made as some manner of lizard or snake or all things that lived in the underbrush and gave fishwives terror-fits).

Oh _attraction _was never the issue. Alistair had all the good bone structure and the sturdy physique, but Aen was the one with the magnetism and the charm. Alistair... Alistair pandered. If he liked you. If he didn't like you, you got the whining. Maybe a sarcastic, dry rejoinder if you struck the right chord.

Zevran once listened in on an entire supper's worth of discussion between the Wardens. Aen would set up a joke mid-conversation, and Alistair would walk right into it. Every. Time. By the third knell, Alistair was red-faced and surly, and Aen would be savoring his victory over a second helping of the uniformly gray stew. It was damn near admirable, the entire exchange. Both that Aen was so engagingly clever and that Alistair never gave up, brave in the face of a challenge wherein he was utterly outmatched, returning over and over again as if he might learn something next round.

It was an attractive dynamic, the Wardens as two halves of a functioning whole, and if Zevran were being honest with himself (in those rare wine-coloured sulks of his) he'd readily admit fault at ever having insinuated himself between the two. Alistair was a hard catch, to be sure, all moral and pomp and stodgy Ferelden disregard for base mortal pleasure. To top it off, Grey Wardens seemed to carry a shawl of martyrdom about their shoulders - Alistair would never give in, because that might risk _happiness_!

And in this hazy sulk, Zevran would feel the old hot anger that so puzzled him when next day's sobriety pounced. Did Alistair not realize that happiness was a rare and fleeting thing, and must be seized up at every chance? What use, to die tomorrow, if he had not truly lived his life to its fullest today? What was morality, if it left your bed empty and your fellow Warden moping by the camp fire?

It baffled Zevran - and as most clever people, Zevran was keen to investigate that which was baffling.

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	4. Chapter 4

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There were very few people Aen would have struck out of anger; that is to say, very few people whose regard he held so highly as to illicit such an immediate emotional response. Zevran had been a visceral interruption since day one, when he lay moaning in the dirt in his ropes and bruises. Not that he was exactly Aen's type, all short and compact and clever enough to cut through any ruse which tested his patience.

The vase went careening off the shelf by pure chance, nicking Aen's bony shoulder before smashing full force against Zevran's tattooed face. There was blood, and the room stilled as if in rapture of the Antivan cursing, all fight gone out of the air.

Aen pushed himself away, fingers uncramping from their clutch at nothing. He did his best to school the heat in his voice. "I think you should leave."

A velvet chuckle, impaired by the nasal whine of a broken nose. "It would be impolite to voice what I think _you _should do, Warden."

Aen stills, eyes pinched shut and mouth clamped over an apology. How had things convoluted themselves so spectacularly between them? He dug back to the beginning of his travels away from the tower's own tangle of intrigues, when he'd lain himself open to a fresh start. By upbringing, if not by choice, he had lived a life as free of sentiment as could be managed. This, a perfect fit for the Grey Warden lifestyle, interrupted only by the deep etch of camaraderie that sprang up between him and those under his command...

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"You'll want a set of boots, where we're going."

Aen's heart had lodged itself firmly in his throat since the introduction, and he'd had to swallow it down to answer. "The bog, I take it?"

Alistair had smiled, a bit wry, as if reluctant to have too good a time too soon into Aen's induction. "You'll have heard as much from the other two by now, yes? Let's just get you to the Quartermaster." The grin tamped down, the playfulness in their banter traded for the hard edge of the dutiful and resigned. It made Aen wonder, and this was a very captivating wonder indeed.

There was a care in Alistair's manner that reminded Aen of Duncan, an untapped leadership that forever lay just beneath the veneer of dry sarcasm and poignant interruptions of sympathy. Alistair was at once cheerful and sincere, two things that mixed dangerously in the tower. He really would have made a great Templar... or else a terrible one.

Aen followed Alistair through the day, prodding him with a gentle line of questioning, revealing the man to be one of duty, of honor and compassion. A keen mind, pretending to be dull because idiocy was simpler. A bit lazy, then, especially slow to rise in the morning unless there was a battle to be had.

Shaving interrupted by a great yawn that revealed a missing molar, perhaps knocked out in some brawl, Aen glancing quickly away when their eyes met in the small window of the mirror. He had offered a hand later that day, picking Aen up from the floor of the ruins before Jory's blood puddled too near his robes. Aen had looked him square in the eye then, and knew what it was to be joined to someone through ritual and calling, and could not help but feel the pull as if they were already lovers.

From that day, Aen watched Alistair. And waited.

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	5. Chapter 5

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"Fine! It's your own hide you're risking!"

"Exactly!" Aen's jaw jutted out as if he were chewing over the words that he could not summon to throw. "And... none of your damn business besides!" A pale finger jabbed through the air, slim frame reluctant to depart the scene, reluctant to let pass the rare moment when Alistair was actually lending his attention to whom Aen was or was not bedding.

"Maker's sake, it's _everyone's _business, the way you two carry on at night." An exaggerated roll of shoulders and eyes.

This took Aen aback - he gathered himself up, squaring his shoulders. "What bothers you more, Alistair, that I'm bedding an assassin, or that I'm bedding anyone at all?"

"That he's an assassin, obviously!"

"Rather stealthy, assassins are."

"Er... yes. Hence my worry."

"In order to be stealthy, one must be quiet, wouldn't you say?"

A flat suspicion, Alistair crossing his arms. "Where are you going with this."

Aen swallows, glancing to the ground and raising his eyebrows as if disappointed. "I'm just curious as to how much 'carrying on' you've actually heard, compared to how much 'carrying on' you've simply imagined during a paranoid snit." He clasps baubled hands behind his back, enchanted rings gleaming in the low light of a half-empty war camp. "We don't bugger every night, you know. Sometimes we just sleep, or sew each other up, or talk." Aen cants his head, eyes darting up like a bird what's caught sight of a spider. "It's nice."

Alistair looks as if he's just burped up a particularly unpleasant part of his supper. "Er," he coughs, hesitant. "Good...? No, bad. Augh, _look_, I just want you safe, is all."

"Hah! Fine then, you go ahead and slay the arch demon and run all the darkspawn out of Ferelden, then I'll be safe as mittens."

"By Andraste's _fire_, Aen, you know what I meant!"

A helpless, breathless laugh. "I -don't- know what it is you mean, Alistair. For once it's -you- that has _me_ stumped. Have you any idea how much I -" "You shouldn't even _be _in this kind of mess right now-" "-ve wanted you to... what mess?"

Alistair steps close, lowering his voice with a pained focus. "Our lives... what we're doing. You'll be gone and they'll still live. Is that... is that _fair_? To them? Rather selfish, isn't it?"

Aen's mouth works like a boned fish. He has been caught off guard, and already so worked up from the argument that Alistair's proximity only fills his chest with an aching heat. "You're concerned. For. What it is that might happen to _Zevran_...?"

"And the others. They... admire you. A lot more than me, at least." A reluctant nod, eyes shifting away and back, then a firmer nod. "Your life is not your own to promise to another. That's... just the way it is, Aen. I'm sorry."

Aen has swayed in place, leaning heavily on his staff, transfixed at the intimacy of their talk, nearly high on the implication. "Except, you."

"I'm no exception, I have the same -"

"No, I mean, I could promise my life to you. We're in this together, after all." A keen, dissecting stare.

Alistair shifts, expression puzzled, then guarded.

Aen Surana - mage, elf, and a man of only nineteen in love for the first time, finds it unbearable to witness Alistair's thoughts play out in full view. It's there in the pinch of his brow, in the unhappy but firm set of his jaw. Alistair doesn't want to admit that he understands Aen, because he doesn't want to deliver that particular rejection. More than that, he doesn't want _Aen _and that's the truth of it. Not like that. Not as anything more than a brother-in-arms.

It would just pain him to admit as much out loud, and so he takes shelter once again in feigned ignorance.

Aen scoffs, biting his cheek and stamping his staff. He wouldn't cry in this moment, not after all the death they'd been through together, but the ache in the core of him would settle low and last far longer than expected, a tug at the back of his eyes and a sting on particularly still days when the darkspawn would leave them to their thoughts.

So he turns from the camp fire, from the argument and the undisclosed reconciliation and, to prove a point, disappears into Zevran's tent.

Zevran is laying on his back with an arm thrown over his eyes, breathing labored for the arrow wounds still tender from their healing. The lamp is well-fueled, the air damp with sweat that thickens the back of Aen's throat with previously suppressed emotion. Zevran glances up in a sharp (belated) surprise, settling back to the furs with a deep breath as Aen undresses.

A slow, drugged announcement, "None of the usual vigors this night, Warden."

Aen hums low in his chest, the old familiar sting of the survivalist goading him to not spend this night alone. No matter what. "I'll take care of you." His voice, steel under the silk of a murmur.

"Heh. Practicing your healcraft?" Under the tattoed forearm, Zevran is smiling.

For reasons unfathomed, this brings Aen relief. He bends to free Zevran of his tunic and smalls, delicate in his administration, feeling as raw on the inside as Zevran might have felt on the outside. Tapered hands freed of their expensive trappings, Aen slides a palm along the inside of Zevran's thigh, interrupting an inquiry with a kiss.

It's a slow breach, an accident of circumstance. Eventually Aen is trading exploratory hands for a cock that had been sluggish to wake, then out again to replace with fingers, stretching and plunging, swallowing the sighs whole before they could escape and form into words. It's Zevran's leg that hooks around his middle, arms winding him down closer until he's in, and it's so tight and unbelievably tense that the reassurance tumbles from his mouth against Zevran's ear in a clumsy wash.

Aen slows, puts a hand on Zevran's hard belly, half-lidded eyes gazing miles away in the space between them. He carts his hips steep, and fucks Zevran at an agonizing pace. It's a contemplative bout, careful with injuries and slow to the top, Aen catching with his mouth what his hands aren't working to climax.

Zevran comes nearly helplessly, though his concern doesn't pounce until the last of the orgasm is wrung from his bedpartner (who lets him back down to the furs with a gentility thus far unexpressed). "Mmnf... what was that for?" Insides shaken and confidence rattled, Zevran as uncomfortable as when all other vulnerability was showing, physical injury or no.

Aen shrugs, unfazed and perhaps a little renewed as a Grey Warden can sometimes be after physical tax. "Thought you could use a go at it."

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	6. Chapter 6

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Alistair of the Grey had far more important matters to set his mind to that did not involve silly infatuations or daft buggering elves. There was the matter of the pike, for starters, which gave a much better reach against those great lumbering ogre types, and was all in all an impressive weapon to master (if one could get past all the innuendo at campside). The practicing he took up in every spare moment, every now and again attracting an audience that might have, once or twice, included an Orlesian bard with an admiring eye.

And, once or twice, an audience of a carefully neutral fellow Warden, whose stare Alistair had grown used to over the course of their travels. It wasn't as if he were the -only- one Aen would aim that piercing gaze at, though Alistair swore he could feel it boring in the back of his head sometimes (a cold and grueling drill when he was acting particularly dense). He was nearly disappointed the day he woke up and Aen wasn't perched at a nearby log with the morning's hard tack clutched between skinny knees, carefully pretending not to watch as Alistair shaved.

It was like finding an owl that had camped near your window suddenly removed, and without that unblinking, unreadable stare the start of the day just didn't feel quite right. Later it was discovered through a bit of camp-side gossip that Aen had been otherwise occupied by their resident whoreson. Having his heart spectacularly broken, if one were to judge by the rumors and the fantastic sulk Aen got up to the rest of the day.

Alistair had to give credit in this, because Aen could sulk with his _entire body_, throwing his skinny weight into an impressive slouch and refusing to meet anyone's eyes lest they recognize the hurt that hid in the smallest corner of his usual grim expression. Zevran's tells were equally subtle and equally loud, in their own way. He was forcibly cheerful, for one, despite the known fact that arrow injuries always brought a surly ire and a colorful sarcasm to the rest of the week.

The _assasin_ seemed damn near afraid to approach Aen, secondly. The two gave each other a wide berth through the whole camp, drawing near only when roadside tactics called for it. Rather than socialize and flirt, during meals Zevran simply disappeared. Aen ate his food like it had deeply offended his honor.

Alistair took leave to repair his shield, hoping to dispel the heaviness that had settled in his gut. He hardly had the courage to ask any favors of Aen just then, least of all the favor he needed once they reached Denerim.

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"And who are you, some elven servant to carry his riches?"

"Don't talk that way to him, he's my friend. And a fellow Grey Warden."

Aen sneered by Alistair's side, crossing his arms. "It's fairly obvious this woman only wants one thing. I'll be outside once you've figured it for yourself."

"Wait, Aen, couldn't we...? I mean, she _is_ family."

Aen blinked, eyebrows in his scarred, matted hairline.

"Er. Right. Nevermind then. I'll... Goldanna, I'll think of something."

"If thinkings was coppers, you'd be as poor as my left tit. Get out of my house."

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"I don't get it..." Alistair stared hard into his ale. "We're supposed to be _family_."

"No great mystery, that. Blood is not nearly as thick as gold." Beside him, Zevran had been the only familiar face at the taverna at such an hour, and Alistair had been meaning to try and patch things up for his fellow Warden. Eventually. When the topic came up. Any moment, probably. Unawares that Zevran was metering out the ale and watering his own wine, prodding at the man's defenses as if to unravel some great knot that had him twisted up in his own damaging beliefs.

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"Truly?"

An embarrassed laugh, wet with the heady smell of umber ale. "I know, I know, but it's true," Alistair's chin rested on the table's edge. "I've never. And you? You've ... the opposite of never. _Always_."

"Hoh. This is true, this is true." Zevran nodded, the edges of his senses dulled. He did not feel safe, in this open tavern, sitting drunk and witless. Still reeling from the separation of one of his finer romantic conquests, and a little bit prone to his own trap of self-pity, seeing how misery so loved company. "Shall we retire our talk to a safer locale, _mi ameno_?"

"Nah." Alistair rose with an announcing belch. "'M gonna hit the hay." A yawn that seemed to follow him all the way up the stairs to the drafty hay-strewn room that he'd settled for while paying his tab (while the others, sober and alert, had opted for the more opulent Gnawed Noble inn by popular vote). "Oh, hang on -" Turning to catch Zevran on his way to an equally cheerless accommodation, Alistair surprised to find that Zevran had stayed directly behind him the whole time.. "I had ta talk t'you. 'Sabout Aen."

Zevran had elbowed through to push the door open and usher them both in before his paranoia caught up with him in full force and made his plan impossible. "Just a man I wished to discuss, as well. Why you don't take him as an lover?" Antivan accent and grammar slipping in his dark-nosed inebriation. The door closed behind them, cutting out the lamplight.

"Well-ugh, ouch." The clatter of boots falling off with some imbalance. Alistair reaching to steady himself, Zevran's every nerve tingling in the pitch dark.

"Why not, hm?" And both had forgotten which question Zevran was referring, because at this point there was a warm, open mouth under his and a hay bed was under their knees and a body was a body was a body was a warm night spent far away from the thoughts that pounce when one is on one's own.

All the while, Alistair lost in a fog with an empty belly and a full head and a heat lancing across every nerve that he'd only felt during some of the more vivid dreams of his youth. He grasped for an anchor and found a small, hard body within reach so that's to what he clung, feverish and grateful for the spiral the ale lent to the room, stomach fluttery when it wasn't tense under the strain of orgasm.

Zevran, for the life of him, couldn't come up with any reason _not _to bed Alistair. The man was handsome, and could have long ago done with a good tumble to clear his head of much nonsense. He was also direct, blindly groping through the dark without the pomp of conversation. Refreshing, especially for that of a virgin.

They landed in a heaped bundle, wrapped together from chins to toes, limbs drunk and improbable around ribs, waist, kisses peppering out in a dying ebb even as knees and ankles locked together in the heat of slumber.

In the morning, Zevran escaped with the sour sting of panic in the back of his throat. Guilty and irritated and angry over his own weakness. Reluctant to measure Alistair's reaction, which had bordered on the depthless shock of a virgin who couldn't quite remember how they came about this sudden knowledge of another body's intimacies.

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End file.
